The Gospel-Acts of God

Acts 10:36-43

As for the word that [God] sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

The key things to be highlighted, within that framework, are the things that God did. The gospel is after all a message about God, a message whose subject matter is Jesus. We already know, and Peter already knew, that Cornelius had showed boundless reverence for Israel’s God. So he tells the story of Jesus as the story of God’s actions (169).

Aaron Orendorff

If the gospel, as Wright says, is the “story of God’s actions” what were/are the acts God performs in the gospel as reported by Peter?

One, God “sent” his word to Israel—“preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ.” Two, Jesus is both “Lord of all” and God’s Messiah—his “anointed” servant endowed with the “Holy Spirit and with power.” Three, Jesus’ identity as Lord and Messiah is evidenced by (1) his works—“he went about doing good and healing”—(2) his death and (3) his resurrection. Four, the apostles are God’s witnesses to all of this, sent out by God and Christ with the commission to “preach to the people” and, five, to declare that Jesus is “the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.” Six, this story of God’s acts in Jesus is the culmination (the climax) of both Israel’s story and the story of creation as borne witness to by “all the prophets” with the intention that, seven, “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”